Another awesome AMD Ryzen Threadripper motherboard.
MSI has decided to create a budget-friendly motherboard for AMD’s Threadripper platform. The motherboard in question is the MSI X399 SLI Plus, and luckily for you, we managed to get our hands on an image of it. The product is officially the ninth X399 Threadripper motherboard, and it shares quite a few similarities with the MSI Carbon Pro. In fact, the layout is pretty much the same for both models. There are a few subtle differences, however, none of which would impact performance in a significant way.
Differences between SLI Plus and Carbon Pro.
At a glance, the first thing we noticed is that the audio chipset does not have a cover. There are also fewer reinforced PCIe slots on the SLI Plus, while the memory slots have no reinforcements whatsoever. Last but not least, the M.2 slot comes with a single “shield”. Clearly, the Carbon Pro is the premium offering here, but real-world performance tests will likely reveal negligible results. When compared to Intel’s X299 platform, Threadripper has significantly fewer motherboards at the time of writing. To be specific, there are 48 Intel X299 motherboards, while AMD can only boast with nine offerings.
Still, with the MSI x399 SLI Plus, the Threadripper ecosystem is slowly but surely growing. Hopefully, more manufacturers will release their own products aimed at AMD’s new chips in order to provide users with viable alternatives to Intel’s platform.
Would you consider building a Threadripper PC based on MSI’s X399 XLI Plus?
